Breadcrumbs

You request a letter ruling on behalf of *************** (the "Vendor"), a registered Massachusetts vendor. You ask whether the Vendor's sales tax record keeping practices, which do not state the tax amount received on the transaction receipt, but state the tax charged on the taxable item's UPC label, are sufficient under Massachusetts law to be used at a special athletic event (the "Event") to be held at a country club in Massachusetts.

I. Facts

The following is your representation of the facts upon which we base this letter ruling. The Vendor will operate a large merchandise pavilion (the "Pavilion") at the Event. The Vendor will be selling both taxable and nontaxable items of tangible personal property, such as clothing, athletic equipment, and memorabilia. The Pavilion will have forty cash registers or checkout stations. Because of the large number of people expected to attend the Event, the Vendor plans to use a special system to record sales of merchandise.

Under this system, merchandise labels will list the UPC code, the sales price of the item, and the amount of tax where applicable. The sales prices on all taxable items will be set at an amount that will produce a total charge, including the sales tax, that is a whole dollar amount. The purpose of setting the prices at whole dollar amounts is to eliminate the need to use coins in the transactions. The Vendor will post signs in the Pavilion indicating that the sales prices include the tax where applicable. The receipts will also state that the sales prices include the tax, although the receipts will not state the tax amount charged in the transaction. The cashiers will record the transactions by scanning the UPC labels at the cash registers or checkout stations.

The Vendor will support its sales tax returns with a sales journal that is further supported by an item-level detailed report. The report will show the quantity of each item sold, and the tax amount paid per item.

II. Discussion of Law

Massachusetts law imposes a sales tax at the rate of five percent on retail sales of tangible personal property in the state by any vendor. G.L. c. 64H, § 2. A vendor is required to add the tax amount to the sales price of the property, and to collect the tax from the purchaser. G.L. c. 64H, § 3(a). The statute requires that upon each sale of tangible personal property the vendor must state and charge the tax separately from the sales price of the item of property, and must show these separate amounts "on any record [of the sale] at the time the sale is made, or on any evidence of the sale issued or used by the vendor." G.L. c. 64H, § 5.

The sales tax record keeping practices proposed by the Vendor conform to these statutory requirements. The Vendor will state the tax amount separately from the sales price on the UPC label, satisfying the requirement that the Vendor add the tax amount to the sales price of the property, under G.L. c. 64H, § 3(a). The receipt, which indicates that the sales price includes the tax, coupled with the UPC label separately stating the tax together comprise the record of the sale issued at the time the sale is made in conformance with the requirement of G.L. c. 64H, § 5. In addition, the Vendor's practice of keeping an item-level detailed report showing the quantity of each item sold, and the tax amount paid per item, satisfies the requirement that the Vendor state and charge the tax separately from the sales price on any evidence of the sale used by the Vendor. See G.L. c. 64H, § 5.

III. Conclusion

The Vendor states that it will label tangible personal property for sale at the Event showing the sales tax amount separately from the sales price on the UPC labels, but not on the receipts. This practice conforms to the statutory requirement that the sales price of an item of taxable tangible personal property must be stated separately from the tax amount. The Vendor's record keeping practices are sufficient to be used at the Event.

Tool Name: Baynote, Inc. Recommendations

The information below summarizes privacy policy terms related to content recommendations on Mass.Gov and is excerpted from the full Mass.gov privacy policy.

Purpose: Displays relevant content recommendation based on the site usage pattern of all users of Mass.Gov. If Personalization is enabled (the default setting), your personal site usage pattern today and on prior visits to Mass.gov will be displayed to you and will also be a factor in determining personalized relevant recommendations for you.

Data Collected: A random anonymous unique identifier is assigned and tracked for each user of the website. This identifier is sent to our vendor, Baynote, when you view a page, open a document or click a link on Mass.Gov. Our vendor then analyzes the specific content that was viewed and provides content recommendations to similar content that you may find useful. A full description of what data Baynote collects and how it uses this data is available at http://www.baynote.com/baynote-services-privacy-policy/. Please note that the tool uses persistent cookies. These cookies will be Mass.gov domain cookies and not Baynote domain cookies. The cookies will store information related to a user’s Mass.gov Web site usage, including the URL and title of sites recently visited and the random anonymous unique identifier assigned to the user. In general, and as described in more detail in Baynote’s service privacy policy linked to above, Baynote only uses the personalized information it gathers to provide recommendation services and display past usage for Mass.Gov users and will not share this information with any third parties, including advertisers. The information collected will not affect content you may see on sites unaffiliated with Mass.Gov.

Express Opt Out: If personalization of recommendations based on the content you view is not desired, or you do not wish to display a list of recently viewed Mass.gov pages, you may turn personalization off. You can do this by using either the switch located below in this privacy policy or an identical switch located directly above the content recommendations and recently viewed content boxes displayed on the Mass.gov site. Once you turn off personalization, your content recommendations will be based on the overall traffic patterns of all users of Mass.Gov and they will not specifically take into account your own personal usage patterns. If you turn off personalization, information collected by this Tool that is associated with your content usage will be deleted from your cookies, and no further information about your content usage will be sent to our vendor.

Disabling personalization will affect both content recommendations and recently viewed page links. If you turn off personalization, this “off” setting will persist as you browse Mass.Gov and during any future sessions. The opt-out setting is stored in a persistent cookie on your computer. The setting will remain in effect so long as you use the same computer with the same Internet browser. If you delete the cookie that contains the opt-out setting or use a different browser or computer, personalization will be enabled and you will need to disable it again on your next visit, if desired.

For our full privacy policy, please close this window and see the Site Policies or Privacy Policy link in the footer of the page.